In its mission to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban communities, the Chemical Industries Education and Training Authority (CHIETA) has opened another SMART Skills Centre to advance basic digital skills.
CHIETA CEO, Yershen Pillay at the launch of the new SMART Skills Centre.
The newest SMART Skills Centre is at the Port Elizabeth TVET College’s Iqhayiya campus, which is located in the rural area of Gqeberha and offers easy access for the local community and surrounding schools.
The partnership embraces digital skills learning across diverse sectors including electronic media, electronics, information technology, telecommunications and others. The college will provide infrastructure and security for the centre, NEMISA (National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa) will provide online learning programs, and MICT SETA will be responsible for providing ICT-related training programmes. Further training programmes will be established once the needs of the community have been more comprehensively assessed.
CHIETA CEO, Yershen Pillay says, “This latest SMART Skills Centre marks another step towards our goal of ushering in new routes to digital skills development and training for rural communities and narrowing the digital divide still prevalent in our country.
“We envisage that the rollout of CHIETA SMART Skills Centres will, over time, contribute to advancing employability among people in rural communities – in various economic sectors – as it will enable skills development in line with the demands of emerging technologies and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
In this way, CHIETA aims to play a role in reskilling and enhancing the sector’s workforce for jobs in the digital era, in response to the rapid evolution of technology.
The new SMART Skills Centre is equipped with 12 training pods, three virtual reality pods and a smart boardroom. All programmes offered at the centre will be free of charge and accessible to nearby rural communities, who will also receive access to social media platforms, free data and career guidance exhibitions. An electronic booking process will ensure that all community members have equal access to the centre and its services.
“Various technology-based skills programmes will also be offered at the centre, related to robotics and virtual welding, for example, as well as other skills and e-learning initiatives,” says Pillay.
“As with all the other CHIETA SMART Skills Centres, key benefits of this centre include its accessibility to a rural community and the augmented reality and virtual reality-based training initiatives for artisans. Intelligent systems are fast becoming integrated into every aspect of our lives and this is driving significant cultural and societal change on a global scale. It is important that we keep up with this trend to develop a future-ready workforce,” Pillay emphasises.
As well as offering programmes that will advance skills development for unemployed youth based on various technologies, including block chain, artificial intelligence, software development and data science, the centre will provide access to online learning platforms that will guide local youth to start up potentially successful and scalable data-driven commercial businesses. The longer-term aim is to provide technological solutions that respond to needs of the local economy.
For more information visit: www.chieta.org.za
